Report Your Success or Failure - X-Series Firmware Update

[RAM GUY]

cl_gibcount

That utility was written for spinning HDD's and it is not known if the reports it gives you is accurate with SSD drives. I would suggest using Parted magic to secure erase the drive and then retest it.

 

Reading through the posts and from my own experience these seem to be the keys to success. But no guarantee OK just what I noticed and some other observations and what I used in the lab that worked.

 

 

1. If you have them in a RAID you should to break the RAID and I would suggest using Parted Magic or G-Parted to secure erase the drives.

 

2. Make sure no TSR's are loaded when you boot to the USB Drive IE memory managers like himem.sys or EMM386.exe. And that you are using Windows 98 Second Edition to make the boot drive you can get these files from http://www.bootdisk.com.

 

3. If the drive is not detected try hot plugging the drive and another USB Port. This was what worked for me and many others who had successs. This is also mentioned when running the Secure erase software as the MB BIOS will sometimes lock the drive and hot plugging or moving to another port will unlock the MB BIOS.

 

4. If it fails on the MB or system you have it on try another system even if its an older system that only supports S-ATA1 it may work.

 

5. MB BIOS's are all different and some MB makers have better written BIOS than others and that can effect the outcome of this utility. Now please dont miss-understand I am not suggesting that one MB maker is better than another but I have seen MB's with different model numbers even from the same MB maker have better written BIOS than another model. A good clue to well written BIOS from a MB maker is not many BIOS updates and not many complaints about BIOS related issues, this requires some research on the MB or MB's in question. FYI! And in all fairness this utility is not what we would 100% stable as mentioned previously.

[Yellowbeard]

I did try this, mentioned it in my post :P ATTO reported peak reads barely above 200000, with reads in the 140000-150000 range. I'm at work so I don't have screenshots on hand.

 

Wow....:confused:....how did I miss that? I need more coffee.

 

The rated 240/170 speeds are when the drive is attached as storage. Not as the OS drive. If you are running the OS on it your scores are accurate. But, a secure erase may indeed improve those some depending on the current condition of the drive.

[Yellowbeard]

Has anyone explained the difference between UPPER and lower case firmware?

 

:confused:

 

It's illustrated in the pictures. As far as the firmware itself, there is NO difference. This is a difference in the ID tag in the update utility.

[cl_gibcount]

Thanks for the responses RAMGUY and Yellowbeard. In the past when I had done a secure erase using parted magic, ATTO reported 270000 read with 200000 writes. Understanding that this utility was written for mechanical drives, those numbers are probably higher then average, but none the less the numbers I'm getting now are lower then before.

 

As you said RAMGUY, I completely understand that this utility is not yet ready for primetime ;):

 

I'll perform another secure erase when I can and will let you know if that restored the numbers I had before (or somewhat close at least).

[RAM GUY]

And some people including my self had slightly lower performance with the new firmware, I suspect the added Trim support may be using some of that bandwidth.

[PrObE]

i actually became a little curious about that as several are reporting slightly lower performance after the update. I will do a secure erase and see what happens. Before the update the drive was performing slightly above the spec @ 280/180, even as boot-drive, after the update, slightly below @ 250/150. Don't ask me what this is all about, but thats what atto gave me before and after, and the strange thing is that it's consistent at -10% roughly.

 

 

Ram Guys theory that TRIM uses more bandwith sounds very reasonable to me, will do the erase, see what happens and report back.

 

cheers,

[silverscorpion]

ive got 4 x64 ssds. i tryed to to flash 1 ssd at a time with lower64.exe and got "firmware download fail".

then i plugged all 4 ssd's in and selected number 4 to update first.it was Successfull firmware v2.0. So then i selected number 3 to update it was Successfull firmware v2.0.

Then i selected number 2 to update it said it was Successfull but the firmware was still 1.0. Then i selected number 1 to update it said it was Successfull but the firmware was still 1.0. So i unplugged all the drives and plugged only the 2 that didnt update in and tryed again. but they wouldnt update. so i plugged all 4 drives in so the 2 drives that didnt update were in 3 and 4 position. selected number 4 to update first. Successfull firmware v2.0. selected number 3 to update next. Successfull firmware v2.0.

[uscool]

Once updated is it better to secure erase after so you can start to get the trim feature working freshly better then having drive thats had alot of stuff written and deleted before the update,

[hayaman]

Tryed it for my X64 lowercase.

 

Did not work on the following setups.

 

evga P55 FTW

Abit AN8 ( nf4 SLI)

Asus nf4 mobo.

Gigabyte P55M-UD4

 

All the above resulted in "Not able to download FW" or similar.

 

Last i tested it on a Abit IS7-E (ICH5R) Same error. So i tryed "SATA only" mode and did the update, this time it took awhile longer. Resulted in the same error. But when i tryed to do the update again, there was no drive.

 

rebooted and ran the FW update once more. But this time the FW was 2.0 on the drive.

 

Installed the drive on my evga P55 again, and booted Win7 no problem. Seems as it worked after all. :)

[betaflame]

so I have 2 X series in RAID0. Will the 1916GC firmware be released at some point?

 

(moved from SSD main forum)

[Wired]

if I have turbo memory trim is still enabled?

What does one have to do with the other?

[Anth]

As it seems people are starting to now get successes that were once fails, can anyone give some tips to increase the chances of success.

 

I have tried hot SATA swapping after the error, but it just keeps producing the error.

 

I am thinking of trying the secure erase but don't want to go through all the hassle of getting into my PC to remove the drive to do this secure erase just to find it does not work either.

 

Are Corsair still working on a better version of this update tool, or is this one all we will get?

 

If so any ETA for this bug free version, are we talking potentially weeks, or months. As I don't want to be waiting till April still using the firmware 1.0.

 

Also just to confirm if we do RMA the drive and live in the UK is there any way I can RMA it without needing to send it to Holland, a £150 drive sent to Holland will not be cheap. Especially if I want to insure it for any lost in the post issues.

[RAM GUY]

All of the posts from "X" Series Firmware Update thread have been merged with this thread to help keep the thread clean and give us better tracking.

 

betaflame

Currently with X-series drives Firmware version 2.0 and 1.1 for X-256 are based on Indilinx reference firmware 1819, I am sorry but as I have stated previously I do not have any information on that version of firmware other than it is not qualified yet, and I have NO ETA on the next release at this time.

 

uscool

This release in non-destructive and should not require the drive be erased, however I did that to mine just because I wanted a clean slate with the new firmware.

 

PrObE

Its actually not my theory but that's fine its what I was told by one of the engineers when I asked why mine was a little slower. But I did not see any difference after the secure erase. However while the over number was slightly slower in my case about 5-6% the smaller files copies was a little faster.

[uscool]

success, after i got failing yday, after reading on this post seems people getting success from moving it to sata 4, i removed all my other sata devices and moved this each time it failed on update through the sata ports it updated when i had it in sata 4 port, i dont know also if moving the boot usb to another port made it update,

 

thanks

[zzap123]

Failed

Dell Workstation 5400 Xeon e5430 Intel chipset

Made bootable USB ok

Used lower128 as was indicated

Was in standard ata mode

lower128 as was required

recognized drive correctly

3 x failed to upgrade flash

Nothing exotic on my machine.

 

Update 2/28 I had changed the drive mode - the machine started and took some tome loading some driver. I did not want it to start but I was not fast enough on the keys. Prior to that my drive had consistently specked out at 1/2 the expected specs. Now it consistently gets 2x around 180000w 270000r. Something happened I do not know what? It is superfact now - I did put it back to AHCI. This x128 was installed from a fresh Win764ult. Any thoughts?

[uscool]

After succefully updating my x64, looking at Crystal Disk Info, My health status was 100% on firmware 1.0, after updating to 2.0 its now on 94% what is all that about ?

 

Also would it be advised after updating my drive now i do a secure erase and install windows 7 just so it can start afresh with Trim, I dont understand i know that Trim will start working now, what about before i updated drive all the deleting and writing on drive.

 

Trim only works using the standerd windows 7 AHCI 1.0 driver right ?

 

Thanks

[RAM GUY]

uscool

I would image the drive using Acronis and then wipe it with Parted Magic if you want to do that however I do not know if it would help the performance. But I did it with mine just because I wanted to start with a clean slate, so its your choice I did not use AHCI and I did not have any problems.

[uscool]

uscool

I would image the drive using Acronis and then wipe it with Parted Magic if you want to do that however I do not know if it would help the performance. But I did it with mine just because I wanted to start with a clean slate, so its your choice I did not use AHCI and I did not have any problems.

 

i dont really care about imaging drive, dont mind reinstalling driver and programs etc, I think i will secure erase it, would make me feel better starting afresh and with Trim from the start,

 

Also i will use parted magic to secure erase it, but would not windows 7 setup format now do its work properly with the trim working now clear the cells,

 

I thought trim commands only works with the windows 7 AHCI standerd sata driver, and my AMD sata driver for board wouldnt work right ?, i also noticed i get faster speed with the windows sata driver

 

Thanks have TRIM at last :D:

[pindakoek]

If I try to boot from my usb sticks the boot just hangs, there doesn't come a command promt or something like that, my mainboard is GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5.

I already checked the boot sequence and there is nothing suspicious about it.

Can someone help me please?

[VovaM]

download firmware faild bye

lower case

 

P5K-E + WiFi

Corsair X 128

 

Succeed!

I just moved from sata 6 (slave/secondary group of disks[6,5], black sockets) into sata 4 port (master/primary group of disks[4,3,2,1], red sockets). Nothing more.

[ea66]

After a day of testing I found something a bit disturbing:

Before the upgrade my X 64 was getting 250MB/S read speed and 165MB write in Atto (values for 128KB transfers and bigger)

Currently the drive goes 225MB read and 150MB write (again in Atto, from 128KB). Also the Windows 7 drive index dropped from 7.4 to 7.2.

 

Can anyone confirm this?

[RAM GUY]

Yes I have seen that to be true for some of the drives, as I have posted on other threads it seems to be for the Trim function it will cause the performance to drop slightly.

[GIBLETS]

PK Premium moved from sata port 1 to port 4,black port alls good.

[kpablo]

No success with X64.

 

But something weird i noticed...

 

Crystal Info have "TRIM" marked.

 

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/7853/53694581.png

 

 

Tried with 4 different systems (3 Intel desktop and 1 laptop).

All says "Firmware download error" Bye!

[oldbrave]

That reference to Trim in CrystalDiskInfo just indicates that the drive supports Trim NOT that it is enabled!

You will need to have ver 2.0 firmware installed to have it enabled.